


stand still; i'm trying to kill you with the past

by cptsuke



Series: Post 32 [1]
Category: The Losers (Comic), The Losers - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, comic ending spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-03
Updated: 2014-03-03
Packaged: 2018-01-14 07:55:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1258759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cptsuke/pseuds/cptsuke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>dealing with death; the end of your old life and maybe moving on</p>
            </blockquote>





	stand still; i'm trying to kill you with the past

In La Paz the altitude makes his head throb and the cold wind sets off a deep ache in his knees. Cougar always hated the cold. He'd shattered his leg once, before becoming a Loser, but because he was a tenacious little fucker he'd healed up enough to be considered fit for duty. If the cold sent shooting agony through his leg, well it wasn't something that ever made public record. People just tended to think that the cold made him a grumpy fuck.  
  
  
They shiver from more than the cold on a bus slowly winding down towards the coast. Maybe after this they'll go island hopping.  
  
  
The streets of Sao Paolo make Jensen laugh. He fits in okay there, it's a city so full of people that even he can blend in a little. Cougar always hated Sao Paolo. Not _hated_ hated, just mildly disliked. But that was mostly because where mexican's called him out on his american-ness as soon as they heard him talk, the portuguese speaking countries always presumed the sniper was one of them. Jensen always found that pretty funny.  
  
They can't stay there, but it's still an entire month before they move on and head back to Mexico.  
  
  
Jensen doesn't mind the ocean. He just has trouble with it. Can't go in. He sits on the sand and watches the waves lap at swimmers. If a passerby suggests he goes in he smiles and lies about having had too much to drink. Once this would've been true.  
  
He went down that route months ago. But there's only so much alcohol you can ingest before the vomit, self hatred and loosening grip on reality finds you in a bathroom deciding between either cutting this shit out or eating a bullet.  
  
  
It's in a shitty motel in Acapulco (not Mazatlán, never Mazatlán) Jensen quits trying to kill himself with alcohol and calls his sister. It's not a great phonecall but it's not the worst ever either. She tells him to call Pooch. The guys worried. Apparently. Jensen doesn't know why, they're fine. Mostly. Sure it gets dark sometimes, but Jensen's learning to ride those waves.  
  
  
They eat in dirty diners and the looks other people give Jensen as he talks across the table makes his skin crawl. _We're going to have to leave_ he says, _I know they don't know, but it feels like they do, you know?_  
  
When they're giving him _those_ looks, like they know exactly what he's done and where he's been, it makes him feel like a Sim. Like he's got a little bubble above his head with what ever the fucking Sim equivalent to 'fucked with the CIA, 'got most of his team killed' and 'wanted for all sorts of bad shit' is.  
  
He half grins even while he's looking above his head. Sometimes, underneath all the paranoia, he still finds it a little amusing.  
  
There's nothing over him of course. But it doesn't makes him feel any less watched. Or guilty. He calls his sister again. Says _Hi_. Says _Lo pierdo_. Says _I'm going to where the volcano was. If Pooch is still worried. Or whatever._  
  
  
He buys two plane tickets to Antigua and nervously paces around in the overly air-conditioned airport.  
  
  
The flight gets delayed in Mazatlán for _thirteen fucking hours_. Jensen cries, he admits, he doesn't want to be anywhere near this place.  
  
Silently in the airport cafe he presses his palms into his face _hard_ as two cups of coffee steam on the table. He mutters quietly about the type of fucking rope he'd use.  
  
It's soothing, calming. Working out where he'd buy it. How much it would cost. How much he would need. He has trouble deciding where he'd do it, there are pros and cons for every place he thinks up.  
  
Staring at the _too long_ life line indents in his palms he thinks he maybe hears Cougar's low chuckle. But he's pretty sure he didn't. He just wants to. One coffee slowly goes cold.  
  
  
He doesn't sleep on the plane. He doesn't like the dreams his brain gives him. He wonders if Cougar dreamt of anything but can't ask.  
  
  
Pooch looks older. He tries to crush Jensen when he gets his arms around him. It feels comfortable and uncomfortable at the same time. Then it just feels weird so he has to extract himself from The Pooch's steel arms of doom. Jesus.  
  
  
Pooch stares at the third beer bottle, the one that sits untouched on the table top. Stares at it like a man just escaped from the desert. Jensen wants to say _take it_. He thinks he'll maybe hit Pooch if he does.  
  
"You gotta stop this Jake." He says. Jensen smiles, as genuine as his smiles come these days. _Damn_ but Poochman sounds like his sister. Word for fucking word.  
  
Jensen isn't Jake anymore. Jake died in a helicopter crash with twenty five kids, two pilots and two gunners seven years ago. It was very sad.  
  
He thinks, sometimes, that maybe he isn't Jensen anymore either. If Jensen was going to die, a nuclear explosion on a newly formed everybody-hating country with two of the baddest CIA created monsters was probably the best way he was ever likely to get.  
  
"I dream sometimes." Jensen says. Which wasn't what he meant to say at all.  
  
"Me too, kid." Pooch looks even older when he says that. It makes Jensen sad, he looks to across the table for agreement, but Cougar isn't there.  
  
"He doesn't talk to me anymore." That wasn't what Jensen wanted to say either.  
  
Pooch looks like he wants to cry, but doesn't. He seems to do that alot around Jensen.  
  
"He's dead, Jensen." The words are soft. Like Pooch is breaking a big fucking secret to Jensen. _Santa Claus isn't real._  
  
Jensen doesn't say anything.  
  
See, Jensen knows Cougar's dead - he was fucking there, didn't you know?  
  
Cougar is dead. Done and dusted. _Heh_.  
  
It doesn't stop him from talking to him; even though, in theory, he doesn't mean to do it. Not really. It's just sometimes when he shares what he's thinking for one sweet, sweet, _bittersweet_ moment he can feel and hear Cougar's quiet laugh.  
  
The come down from _not_ hearing it, to put it mildly, sucks ass. But the idea of giving up that split second moment of hope isn't something he's capable of. Not yet.  
  
So fuck everybody who wants to take that from him.  
  
Fuck it. He should've stolen the fucker's hat. Then he would've _had_ to survive. If only to kick Jensen's ass for touching the hat.  
  
Jensen would've been okay with that.  
  
  
He gets sloppy drunk that night. Drunker than he's been in _ages_ , not since the cold bathroom tiles and the colder metal barrel of his pistol.  
  
He doesn't remember the hours between tenth beer and last beer, but he does remember the way Pooch gently put him to bed.  
  
Remembers mumbling _I hope I don't dream tonight_. Definitely doesn't remember Pooch removing his glasses, smoothing his hair off his forehead and telling him _don't dream; just sleep_.  
  
  
The thing is Jensen dreams. All the fucking time.  
  
  
Sometimes Jensen drowns in the ocean.  
  
Sometimes he gets hit with the same bullets that takes Cougar out and they fall down in the doorway.  
  
Sometimes they don't fall in the door, they retreat; firing and bleeding out in the halls.  
  
Sometimes Fahd triggers the bomb as they come through the door and they vaporise before they know what hits them.  
  
Sometimes Jensen boils to death in the ocean, alone. A mushroom cloud decorates the sky above him. He doesn't know if the sea would actually boil. It sounds pretty awesome though.  
  
Sometimes it's him choking bloodily on the floor, looking up at Cougar. Cougar never leaves him in those dreams. Jensen wakes up to those dreams feeling like the worst person in the world and wishing he was even half the person Cougar was.  
  
Sometimes he dreams - dreams that are mostly nightmares - about sharks. Getting eaten by them mostly. Something unseen coming at him from the dark and tearing him to shreds.  
  
He's been to enough shrinks - sometimes on his own volition - to know; dreams about sharks? Not always about the fucking shark.  
  
  
Not that sharks aren't scary mother fuckers. All that constant moving and killing and their cold dead eyes? There's a reason why calling people a shark is never a compliment. Even if some people take it as such, and really those people just prove the fucking point.  
  
Roque used to laugh when Jensen called him one.  
  
Fuck, maybe Jensen should just use that as a personality tester. Do you like to think of yourself as a shark? No? Have a beer. Yes? Bang.  
  
  
"Do you ever think about _her_?" he asks Pooch.  
  
Because Jensen does. Thinks about her all the fucking time. Wonders if Aisha made it out. Kind of hopes she did. Maybe because if she did, then everyone else connected to that damned place was dead. Because maybe then his shark dream could play out with Aisha starring as the shark. Maybe he'd put a bullet in her spine and _talk_ to her.  
  
And maybe he just likes the idea that he wasn't the lone survivor.  
  
  
It's midday and Jensen almost feels like Jensen again. Either that or he's drunk enough to be able to fake it.  
  
There's five shots lined up - one for each Loser. Even one for Roque, because even if he did try and cave Jensen's skull in (and kill him dead) and chop Pooch's pinkie off; maybe it was just because he was the first casualty of the group.  
  
Maybe he died somewhere between that helicopter and the five years that followed. Maybe they were all too busy trying to come back from the dead to notice the corpse in their midst.  
  
Maybe Jensen's just had shittier life experiences but he doesn't hold a lot of hate for Roque, not like Pooch does. Roque certainly wasn't the first long time friend that Jensen's had whose turned around and stabbed him the back. Although, he must admit, Roque did have the honour of being the first one to do it _literally_.  
  
Does he regret being the one who killed Roque? Hell no. But he still mourns the guy that used to joke around with him over the comms.  
  
  
Jensen downs the first four shots and wonders if maybe they should have one for Aisha. Or the twenty five kids who died in their place. Or the four guys in the chopper who came to pick them up. Or. Well, Jensen's not sure there's enough alcohol in the world for all the collateral they've racked up.  
  
  
The last shot is in their hands when Stegler appears. A shot for themselves. It's maybe a little pretentious, but by now Jensen reckons they've fucking earned the right to be a little pretentious.  
  
  
Stegler walks in and Jensen freaks the fuck out. Luckily he hasn't lost all of his skills, even if he still orders doubles of everything, and his massive internal freakout registers in the real world as him taking a large swig of his beer.  
  
  
The taste of it clashes badly with the tequila.  
  
  
Pooch notices though and places a palm gently on his arm. Jensen would really like to know when he got so easy to read. He misses the good old days when he could disguise a sucking chest wound as a mild cough.  
  
Fuck. He wants to go back to when he could make Robert de Niro want to quit acting and cry himself to death because Jensen could act - _lie_ \- better with just a smile than any motherfucker could with words.  
  
Jensen and his emotions used to be fucking _tight_. Now it seems that every fucking second they were wondering off to shake their wares on street corners. For fuck's sake.  
  
  
So yeah, he comes off a little manic talking to Stegler. Pooch leans back in his chair like he's not thinking of all the exits and where the hell he's going to move his family to.  
  
Jensen can't do that. For one he doesn't have anyone to worry about, he doesn't visit his sister so that's not an issue, and for two, he can't keep his emotions down. They keep bubbling to the surface and erupting without warning.  
  
One minute he's mildly amused as he questions the agent on how he got away from the sheik, the next he's snapping angrily about Aisha and _oh god_ the nuke.  
  
Jensen wonder's if Stegler knows how lucky he is to have caught up with Jensen while Pooch is here to be a nice, calming influence. Pooch says _easy kid_ and Jensen leans back, thinking about the sound bones make when they break.  
  
Sometimes it's a cracking noise, loud and resounding. Sometimes they make a deep grinding noise, the sort you feel as you hear them.  
  
He grabs his beer, hand circling around the glass neck, and doesn't kill anyone.  
  
  
The job offer and flattery is nice, in that really extremely inappropriate way. Pooch actually chuckles. Low and quiet. Jensen closes his eyes as Pooch says _go for it, kid_.  
  
They stand together, Stegler watches them with the expectant look of a man used to getting what he wants.  
  
Jensen turns back to Mr CIA, thinks about everything that's happened these last few years.  
  
Thinks about the cold ocean and the hot sun.  
  
Thinks about Pooch coming back for them and his face when he realised Jensen was all that was left.  
  
Thinks about the hole of despair in his chest when he surfaced into the great emptiness of the ocean.  
  
Thinks about how that despair hasn't shifted. Not fucking _once_.  
  
Thinks about Cougar. _God_ , all he ever does is think about Cougar.  
  
Thinks about the smile the motherfucker had on his face as he wrapped around himself around the sniper, smearing blood into his wetsuit.  
  
Thinks about burning fire and gun shots and adrenaline pushing him on even when all he wanted to do was sit down and _stop_.  
  
He thinks of all that and puts it into his final words.  
  
_Fuck you_ , Company Man.

 


End file.
